Jessica Scott Mr. Malgeri Forensic Science September 28, 2016 Ronald Cotton It started in July 1984, when a attacker broke into Jennifer Thompson-Cannino's apartment and sexually assaulted her while she was held at knife point. Jennifer stated that when it was happening she just wanted to memorize his face so that if she lived through the horrible crime she would be able to identify him. Later on, Jennifer chose Ronald Cotton, a black restaurant dish washer, out of a photo lineup as the assailant. And chose Cotton in a live line up a second time.…
Eyewitness misidentification is the most common cause of wrongful convictions, accounting for at least seventy-two percent of convictions overturned through DNA testing (The Innocence Project). This being said, eyewitness errors may happen for several reasons, including suggestive police interviewing, an incorrect belief about what the witness saw, and the malleability of confidence (Denov & Campbell, 2005). In this specific case, the malleability of confidence was present. The malleability of confidence refers to how easily influenced the witness is to changing circumstances under stress (Denov & Campbell, 2005). This was evident when Mrs. Roy changed the physical features of the perpetrator to fit Phillion 's description due to the stress of having to choose someone to convict.…
Eyewitness testimony is being able to choose the suspect out of a lineup or an array of photos. Sometimes the witnesses' testimony is not always accurate. When a witness falsely testifies they can send an innocent person to prison. An example of a case where the eyewitness testimony was incorrect was in the murder of 78-year-old Jack Sasson. The man who was convicted of the murder of Mr. Sasson was 18-year-old Kash Register.…
1. Do you think that Tyrone Briggs might be a victim of false identification? Why or why not? I think that Tyrone Briggs might be a victim of false identification for two reasons.…
The film Murder on a Sunday Morning was a murder case in Jacksonville involving a 15 year old teenager being accused of 1st Degree murder and theft. In the video, it showed the process of the trial and both sides of the case. The lawyer in the video was defending Brenton Butler, the person accused of the incident and the lawyer truly believed that Brenton was not the person that committed the crime. Patrick McGuiness, the lawyer, went out of his way to not only prevent Brenton from serving life in jail, but to also get the real criminal that committed murder. In the end, McGuiness was able to prove to the jury that Brenton was not guilty and that the real murderer was still on the loose.…
Eyewitness misidentification has been the predominant cause of erroneous convictions. A study by the Innocence Project shows that it plays a role in 72% of justice miscarriages. However, eyewitness testimony is considered compelling evidence and has been the foundation upon which many cases have been brought to trial. Factors like weapon focus effect, forgetting curve, cross racial identification, communication with witness after identification and memory contamination, contribute to eye witness misidentification. Some of these factors are interestingly depicted in Picking Cotton.…
One of the main causes of wrongful convictions is eyewitness misidentifications. Despite a high rate of error (as many as 1 in 4 stranger eyewitness identifications are wrong), eyewitness identifications are considered some of the most powerful evidence against a suspect. Why are eyewitness identifications subject to such a high rate of error? There are numerous reasons for this: (1) witnesses are subject to high stress or anxiety; (2) the human memory tends to reconstruct incidents because humans do not have the capability to record memories like a video recorder; (3) witnesses often focus on weapons, not the identity of the perpetrator; (4) suggestive eyewitness identification procedures used by police or prosecutorial agencies; and (5) cross-racial…
Instead, the witness must reconstruct the event from memory, which allows the possibility of inaccuracy, even without law enforcement involvement. Despite evidence of flawed traditional eyewitness identifications, eyewitnesses are still used regularly for law enforcement as thousands of suspects are targeted each year based on eyewitness reports. As the U.S. Supreme Court has noted, "There is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the stand, points a finger at the defendant and says, 'That's the…
The value of eyewitness evidence depends on how strong it is from the beginning and whether it is preserved or tested properly. If the evidence is weak then it cannot be processed as a valuable report from the crime because there can be various mistakes such as description errors or the accuracy of what happened in the crime scene. In the documentary “Murder on a Sunday Morning” (2002) the eyewitness identification in…
In Illusory Causation in the Courtroom, published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, G. Daniel Lassiter explores illusory causation in terms of the role it plays in courtrooms. This is the possibility of the effect that camera perspective has on jurors’ judgements on the suspect’s guilt, whether it was a voluntary confession and sentence recommendations. The Death Penalty Information Center had documented cases in which death row inmates were released due to new evidence and in many cases, the cause of wrongful convictions can be traced back to the interrogation phase in which false confessions are extracted. Many experts believe that the solution to suspects being coerced into wrongful confessions are videotaping confessions.…
The accuracy of their testimony is sometimes called into question, especially if a witness says they saw the…
INTRODUCTION Eyewitness testimony, which depends on the precision of human memory, enormously affects the result of a trail. For instance, In 1984, American College Student Jennifer Thompson was assaulted at knifepoint by a man who burst into her dorm. Amid her difficulty, Jennifer focused on everything about her aggressor so she could later precisely identify him. Soon thereafter, she worked with law enforcement to make a precise representation out of an attacker. A couple days after the fact she recognized Ronald Cotton as the attacker and chose him from an identity parade.…
When a conviction depends completely on whether or not an eyewitness can select the correct suspect and not one of the foils, known non-suspects, out of a lineup is where many cases of wrongful convictions can begin. For example, in many cases it appears juries believe a witness who can correctly identify a defendant from lineups, even when other sources of evidence are contradictory to their statements (“Eyewitness Identification” 1); therefore, proposing a possibility of bias towards one piece of evidence while ignoring all opposing information from others. However, some may say that eyewitness testimony is the only way to correctly identify the accused suspect. Although in some cases that statement may be true when no other form of evidence is present, for so many others, the eyewitness identification can lead to a lapse in judgement by the jury who may very easily dismiss other pieces of evidence that are available to them; therefore, an individual who unfortunately matches the description of the guilty party may be imprisoned for a crime they did not commit.…
In conclusion, both an eyewitness and the reasonable person provide standards in the court of law that are used in determining whether to convict a suspect, as demonstrated by the eyewitness in the State v. Hendersen (2011) case. Unfortunately, both standards are based upon subjective perception. For example, human error in memory processing may decrease the accuracy in an eyewitness testimony. Research should be done on individual interpretation as it relates to an eyewitness or the reasonable person in order to prevent any wrongful…
In a study done by Steven D. Penrod and Brian L. Cutler, eyewitness identification was tested to find the most reliable effects on eyewitness performance. The studies that they performed indicated that jurors ' evaluations of identification evidence are heavily influenced by the confidence of the eyewitness. Unfortunately, in this case and in many other cases, the confidence of the eyewitness did not matter because he still identified the wrong man. The correlation between confidence and accurate eyewitness identification is weak (Penrod & Cutler, 1989). Because the victim’s husband was so confident in his identification, the cops did not feel obligated to find all of the evidence that they needed to prosecute Brenton.…